As we prepare for the beginning of our new Legislature, I’m reminded of something that one of America’s founding fathers, James Wilson said: “The advantages of democracy are liberty, equal, cautious, and salutary laws, public spirit, frugality, peace, opportunities of exciting and producing abilities of the best citizens. Its disadvantages are dissension, the delay and disclosure of public counsels, the imbecility of public measures retarded by the necessity of a numerous consent.”